


White Jasmine

by Flightless_Bird



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: A lot of them are just mentioned though sorry, Aaron is a sad sad little soul, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, One-Sided Love, Unrequited Love, america's favorite fighting Frenchman owns my soul ok, and he speaks french, bashful!lafayette give me life, eventual Aaron/Lafayette, i kinda really like her, lafayette unexpectedly helps, please don't judge my tags, sorry - Freeform, theodosia is supportive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 17:32:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10168151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flightless_Bird/pseuds/Flightless_Bird
Summary: "That night, they met Lafayette, Mulligan, Laurens. They took a liking to him too. Who wouldn't, once they heard him speak? Voice like rainstorms, words like thunder. He was a match and Aaron ached to be the one to light him up. They flocked to him and soon the name Alexander was in everyone's mouth, all around the room. Aaron wanted it only in his.That night, Hamilton met Laurens.That was the first night Aaron's mouth tasted of something bittersweet."





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic for these guys, so I really hope it doesn't suck, lol. I am in love with Hamilton and I recently discovered the fictional hanahaki disease and thought it fit perfectly for these characters.
> 
> I am also in rarepair hell with Lafayette and Aaron, someone join me.
> 
> Hope you like it! :3

Aaron didn't speak to anyone about it.

  
It wasn't something most people spoke of and he'd only been lucky enough to meet one other person with it. If he had dared to mention it to a doctor, he would have been cast out as a lunatic. If anyone saw, he would have been deemed as cursed.

  
So no one knew. No one saw. He never breathed a word.

  
There were violet petals strewn across his bedroom floor.

-X-X-X-

  
He remembered the day that he first met him, the orphan, the upstart, the writer. Alexander Hamilton.

  
A tap on his shoulder and a curious, "pardon me. Are you Aaron Burr, sir?"

  
And when he turned, with his usual answer still slipping casually off of his tongue, he was met with the most soulful brown eyes. He wouldn't have been so shaken, but the flame in those eyes, the burn, it struck him, strung him like cello strings and vibrated the whole way down to his core. He swallowed as the boy talked— _name, his name is Alexander, Alexander_ —and when he spoke again he couldn't keep the slightest unsteadiness out of the edge of his voice.

  
"I'm getting nervous." God, he was. He was nervous every day since, when those eyes found him, when a smile darted across his mouth and then formed his name. Nervous, nervous, nervous.

  
That night, they met Lafayette, Mulligan, Laurens. They took a liking to him too. Who wouldn't, once they heard him speak? Voice like rainstorms, words like thunder. He was a match and Aaron ached to be the one to light him up. They flocked to him and soon the name _Alexander_ was in everyone's mouth, all around the room. Aaron wanted it only in his.

  
That night, Hamilton met Laurens.

That was the first night Aaron's mouth tasted of something bittersweet.

-X-X-X-

  
  
Oh. Eliza.

  
_Oh_.

  
He hadn't prepared for this. The moment he saw them, the four who were inseparable, laughing like the night was theirs, he tried to avoid them. God knew he tried. But they found him anyway, those soulful eyes, and that voice: "Well, if it isn't Aaron Burr!"

  
He wondered if he should've kept walking faster, but his own lungs betrayed him, took a breath. He was speaking to them, dammit, why was he acknowledging this? All four of them with their drink-bright eyes and stupid grins, like they owned the entire revolution and they knew it.

Laurens leaned heavily against Hamilton, dark hair a little askew with a candlelight-glow in his eyes when he looked at the soon-to-be-wed. He smiled softer than the others. There was a sadness that lingered around his edges that made Aaron feel a sudden familiarity.

  
But it wasn't the same sadness. It could never be the same, not when Alexander looked at Laurens like that too, sometimes, when Eliza couldn't see.

  
Aaron's throat constricted.

  
"I see the whole gang is here," he remarked, forcing a warm smile out for them.

  
A round of snickers and muttered comments, Lafayette slinging an arm about Mulligan's shoulders and scoffing, "you are the worst, Burr." His mouth tilted up at one side, held a cocky air to it. It reminded Aaron of Hamilton's smirks, those ones he saved for a fight, right before he came dangerously close to making a fool of himself. Wide and crooked, devil-may-care, kissable—

  
His stomach twisted up warningly and, when they were alone, he hid his grimace behind a polite refusal: "you're very kind, but I'm afraid it's unlawful sir."

  
Oh yes, Theodosia. He'd found her at one of his worse times, or well, she had found him. She'd taken pity. It was hard not to, when one came across an officer sobbing between racking coughs in an alleyway; tears making a mess of his face, twilight petals making a mess of his uniform. He'd been horrified. She was one of the only people to ever know. She was kind. Beautiful. Charming.

  
Distraction, distraction, distraction.

  
"I will never understand you," Hamilton sighed, brown eyes flicking down and away. Aaron almost felt colder with the loss of that soft gaze on him. "If you love this woman, go get her. What are you waiting for?"

  
The answer was there, bubbling in his chest. It hurt, it burned his lungs like flames and begged to be let out. But he'd never speak it out loud. It would surely kill him.

  
"I'll see you on the other side of the war."

-X-X-X-

He coughed around a sip of water, choked as it gurgled against the things clogging his throat. Bent double, he leaned heavily against the surface of his desk. It was best to do this when people couldn't see, alone in a candlelit office at night. Heaving, he managed to free his airway and gulped down air. It raked down his throat like blades.

In his glass were pinpricks of scarlet blood and gently floating petals.

 

-X-X-X-

It wasn't fair, it would never be fair.

  
Hamilton won Washington's favor, Hamilton won Eliza, Hamilton won this foolish foolish heart in Aaron Burr's chest.

  
And what did Aaron win? Theodosia's last breath and a lungful of flowers.

 

-X-X-X-

The bar was raucously loud, but then, bars were almost always that way when a group of young men found their way inside. That seemed to happen most nights, and tonight was no exception. Aaron didn't bother with them though. Instead, he sat alone, a glass in his hand and his mind clouded. He was torn between dashing for home and maybe starting a fight with one of the rowdy boys here. It was a strange mixture of wanting to be around people and wanting to be desperately, hopelessly alone. Anything that could make him feel something other than the weight against his ribcage. He twirled the liquid in his glass a few times and watched it spin. He imagined petals dancing atop it, as they usually did when he tried to drink something.

  
For some reason, drinking seemed to stir this thing inside of him and send it bursting up his throat.

  
He considered downing the rest of it, then decided against it. It was bad enough that he knew he was going to be a hacking mess when he tried to sleep. He didn't have to force it upon himself in public. Sliding it away from him, he made to stand up.

  
The sudden arrival of someone slipping into the chair across from him had him pausing. Who...?

  
"Lafayette?" Bewilderment made him forget to add the _monsieur_ that Hamilton and his friends affectionately used when they spoke to the Frenchman. But Aaron was too caught off-guard. It was just....out of all of Hamilton's gang, Lafayette seemed to ignore Aaron the most. They had hardly spoken before and on a night like this, Aaron would've thought he'd be with, well, Hamilton.

  
Lafayette smiled ruefully, leaning folded arms against the tabletop. "Burr," he greeted with a slight nod.

  
"What're you doing here?" Aaron was aware that this was not, perhaps, the most polite way to begin a conversation. But he was beginning to realize that Lafayette being here meant he couldn't leave just yet and that was a problem. The petals inside of him fluttered warningly, a twist in his chest that he knew all too well.

  
Lafayette shrugged with a shoulder, dark eyes trailing off to the side. "Mulligan is busy, Hamilton is writing— _again_ —Laurens is with Hamilton..." The words faded off into a weighted sigh. "So here I am, with nowhere to go and no one to go somewhere with. Well, except you," he added, with an upward twist of his lips. "What are you doing here anyway?"

  
"What does that mean?" Aaron asked, the defensiveness creeping up into his voice.

  
"You don't strike me as the type to hang around this lot, mon ami," Lafayette replied wryly. He pointed a thumb over his shoulder to where one of the younger boys was attempting to down an entire bottle while his friends cheered him on.

  
Aaron wrinkled his nose. "I just needed a place to think," he answered quietly. _And the back alley is dark enough to hide me throwing up my lungs after I leave_.

  
"Sorry to disappoint, but isn't the place to go if you want to think." At Aaron's raised eyebrow, Lafayette flicked his fingers toward the half-empty glass still sitting on the table. "It's the place you go to forget."

  
Aaron shifted uncomfortably. "Yes, well. I suppose."

  
"Who are you trying to forget?" Lafayette asked, cocking his head.

  
_If you stand for nothing, Burr, what'll you fall for_? "Why do you assume it's a person?" he stalled.

  
"The same reason you won't look at me when you answer."

  
Aaron's eyes shot up to his then and he recognized the shadow that fell over Lafayette's expression. It was the same shadow that came over Theodosia's, when she'd caught him peeling a stray leaf from the roof of his mouth and wincing. It made Aaron curl his hand into a fist under the table. He didn't have much taste for pity. "It's no one."

  
"You don't have to lie to me."

  
"I'm not."

  
"Burr."

  
"Lafayette."

  
They locked eyes. The table between them suddenly felt a lot more necessary, because Aaron was really starting to itch for a fight now. Physical pain was a great distraction from this deep-rooted blade in him. But Lafayette broke eye contact and huffed out a heavy breath. "God, you are impossible," he grumbled, running a hand over his hair. Setting his chin atop his hand, he regarded Aaron through careful, searching eyes. Then,

  
"It's Hamilton, _non_?"

  
Aaron felt two terrifying things happen at once. One, his eyes started to prickle at the edges at the sound of Hamilton's name and oh god, he did not want to cry in front of Lafayette. And two, his ribs ached warningly. He gritted his teeth. _Okay, fine, I can handle crying, but there's no way in hell I'm coughing these stupid things up in front of him_. Stubborn and in pain, he shook his head tensely.

  
Lafayette slanted him that _don't bullshit me_ look. A tear was dangerously close to escaping and Aaron finally brought his hand up to rub at his eyes. Lafayette's expression gentled then. "I'm sorry," he murmured.

  
"Don't be," Aaron growled, the hurt and the anger all knotted together.

  
"It's okay to be hurt," Lafayette said. "Holding it back doesn't make it any better."

  
"Yeah, well...." Aaron sighed defeatedly. "Neither does talking about it."

  
The silence that fell between them then felt too full with confession. Aaron could feel that push in him again, telling him to either run away or let it spill out. He'd never planned on anyone else knowing. Theodosia had taken his secret to the grave, filled bags with bloody petals and thrown them out. He'd lived through the sleepless nights where he could barely breathe through his coughs, when he'd brimmed with so many sobs and flowers, that his vision blurred and he was sure that he'd black out. It was his burden. It would kill him someday, and he had accepted that. Talking about it wouldn't help.

  
But he was just so _tired_.

  
It spilled from him anyway.

  
"Purple anemones." Lafayette blinked and Aaron swallowed, keeping his gaze fixed on a place on the tabletop. "Alex—Hamilton is, um, purple anemones."  
Lafayette's lips parted, the blankness in his face giving nothing away as to what he was thinking. Aaron folded his hands atop each other on the tabletop and stared down at them. He didn't expect Lafayette to understand. Honestly, he wasn't sure why he'd bothered to mention it. Maybe he wanted someone to know. Just once. Then, when he finally suffocated on his heartache, someone would know what had killed him.

  
He wasn't sure what he was expecting. But it certainly wasn't what he heard next.

  
"You're white jasmine."

  
It took him two seconds longer than it should have to understand exactly what he was hearing. When he did, though, his head jerked up and his wide eyes landed on a suddenly very quiet Lafayette. He stared down at the ground, a stray curl falling over his eyes. Almost as if he could sense Aaron's gaze on him, he glanced up. "They don't look, uh—" he cleared his throat, "—very pretty after I...you know. But I think... _vous êtes une belle fleur_." He couldn't look at Aaron then and when a half-pained smile tugged at the side of his mouth, he bit his lip over it.

  
Aaron couldn't form words. He'd never seen Lafayette like this before. His throat felt thick again, but for a completely different reason. "Lafayette..."

  
"Don't look at me like that," Lafayette huffed out in a laugh, painfully bitter. "I've dealt with it for a long time, but I bet you've dealt with yours longer."

  
The thought of someone else suffering just as much, because of him, was unfathomable. "You know that I..." I still love him.

"Don't feel guilty, Burr," Lafayette told him, tone dropping to quiet resignation. "Or obligated. I wasn't expecting anything to come out of telling you."

  
Their silence returned and with it, the new heaviness of this truth between them. Aaron wondered when Lafayette found the time, when he'd stolen away from the group to find a place to bury his petals or how many times he'd faked smiles in front of Aaron. How much pain had he been in? Had it been the same agonizing burn that Aaron's was? Or were jasmine flowers easier to stomach?

  
He fingered the edge of his chair. _I wonder what flower Lafayette might've been_.

  
"Maybe something can come out of this, someday," he said, and Lafayette's breath caught.

-X-X-X-

After two weeks, he stopped seeing blood speckled across some of the petals.

After two months, he had to peel only one away from the lip of his glass.

After a year, it stopped altogether.

So did Lafayette's.

**Author's Note:**

> So I sort-of invented my own cure? I mean, the "official" definition of the disease is that the cure is the love being reciprocated or surgically removing the flowers. I also believe that if a person can move on from that love, they can also be cured. (Because I mean, that can happen.) Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this! Let me know what you think :D
> 
> Oh, and based on my Google findings, I chose purple anemones for Aaron's and Hamilton's love, as they can symbolize forsaken love. (They are also not the anemones from like, Nemo lol. They are actually very beautiful <3)
> 
> White jasmine was Burr's and Lafayette's because, when given the chance, it is a very gentle, sweet-nothings kind of love, which they often symbolize. (And Lafayette would be that kind of boyfriend c'mon c:)


End file.
